Here in Canada, the Trudeau government defends Israel's right to traffic its settlement products on store shelves, tariff-free and beneath "product of Israel" labels, effectively endorsing their de facto annexation and concealing their criminal origin from law-abiding Canadian consumers. Even though its official position is that settlements impede the creation of a truly sovereign Palestinian state -- an outcome it claims to support.

So, what are the "global rules, principles and protections" Champagne's government is willing to violate in exchange for cozy relations with Israel? They are the most foundational norms of modern international humanitarian and human rights law -- some of them incorporated into Canadian domestic legislation.

Last month the Canadian Embassy in Tel Aviv held an event to celebrate Canadians fighting in the Israeli military. They invited all 78 Canadians in the IDF to the ambassador’s residence to demonstrate their appreciation. Referring to non-Israelis who join the IDF, ambassador Deborah Lyons told the Jerusalem Post, “Canadian lone soldiers are a particularly special group … This is something we want to do on a yearly basis to show our support.” At the event Canada’s ambassador said, “we both share a love of Canada and a love of Israel. We at the embassy are very proud of what you’re doing.”

Canada will “carefully examine the details of the U.S. initiative for the Middle East peace process,” Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne said Tuesday, calling for a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The carefully worded statement avoided any assessment of President Donald Trump’s initiative, seen as another significant departure from decades of U.S. policy in the Middle East. It also refrained from calling Trump’s latest diplomatic initiative a “peace plan.”

VANCOUVER – Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV) is outraged by the federal government’s refusal to respond substantively to irrefutable evidence of violations of the Income Tax Act by a registered Canadian charity.

Yesterday, the government issued its official response to IJV’s formal, legal Parliamentary e-petition, signed by over 3,500 Canadians, calling on the Jewish National Fund of Canada’s (JNF Canada) charitable status to be revoked due to their numerous, grave, persistent violations of the Income Tax Act. The government’s response was simply a reiteration of the same response IJV and other concerned parties have been receiving from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) for decades — that the auditing process is confidential, and that the CRA ensures that registered charities are held accountable for violations of the Income Tax Act accordingly.

Pro-Israel lobby groups B’nai Brith Canada and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) have once again levied the charge of antisemitism at a Palestinian rights activist in what appears to be an attempt to tarnish his reputation. Their latest target is lawyer and former Green Party Justice Critic Dimitri Lascaris.

Members of Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV) and other Jewish social justice activists have worked with Mr. Lascaris for years. We state categorically that the accusation of antisemitism against him is false and irresponsible.

The modus operandi of these groups is to seize upon a word or a phrase by an individual, label it a manifestation of Jew-hatred, demand that people and organizations dissociate from the accused, and then repeat the allegations in the hope that the accusations, and not the facts, prevail.

On September 12, 2018, protestors gathered in Vancouver, Canada outside the constituency office of BC’s Attorney General, David Eby, to call for an end to complicity in Israeli occupation and war crimes and a boycott of Israeli wines in BC government-owned liquor stores. A letter signed by 25 groups was hand-delivered to the office staff, and the protestors made it clear this was an ongoing campaign that would continue until their concerns were addressed. They highlighted the parallels with the campaign in BC 30 years ago against South African apartheid wines and concluded by refusing to be made complicit in Palestinian dispossession and violations of international law.

Following is the text of the letter that was delivered, along with the signatories to date.

David Eby, BC Attorney General

Dear Mr. Eby:

We wish to bring to your attention our concerns about Israeli wines, many of them produced in the Occupied Territories, which are being sold in our publicly owned BC Liquor Stores. We note that as BC’s Attorney General, you are responsible for the provincial Liquor Distribution Branch.

We had hoped that the current NDP government would be more concerned with these blatant violations of international human rights, but we are aware that your response to inquiries so far has been to completely ignore the issues raised and instead focus solely on “personal choice”.

The wines in question are either from the Galil Winery, which is a joint venture with the Golan Heights Winery (the name of which speaks for itself) or from the occupied West Bank, including the illegal Gush Etzion settlement bloc around Jerusalem. Two wines of particular note are the Efrat Judean Hills Kosher and Vision Malbec, both produced by the Israeli Teperberg Winery. This winery openly states that some of its vineyards are in occupied Palestinian territories and even provides a map on its website showing vineyards in the occupied West Bank.

On the morning of July 5, not long before the Israeli Supreme Court froze the demolition of the Palestinian-Bedouin village Khan al-Ahmar, Canadian student Michaela Lavis was arrested along with other human rights activists who were conducting a “stand-in,” to try and stop the bulldozers.

Lavis, 21, is a child and youth studies student at Ryerson University in Toronto. She was part of a group that attempted to block one of the bulldozers by chaining themselves together and sitting in front of it. A member of the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem was also arrested at the demonstration.

Lavis had been volunteering in the West Bank city of Ramallah with a group called Defence for Children International-Palestine. She had also been volunteering with an occupational therapist who provides support to special-needs children in the area.

On Monday, Canada's New Democrats strongly condemned the killings of protesters in Gaza by Israeli Defence Forces and urged the Liberal government to take a more active stance for peace and human rights. According to numerous news reports, at least 55 Palestinians in Gaza were killed and around 2,000 were injured Monday by the Israeli military in demonstrations near the Gaza-Israel border.

“The use of live ammunition against protestors and resulting deaths are clear violations of international law and human rights,” said NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. “Our government has been shamefully silent on recent developments in Gaza, and the Prime Minister should condemn the violence, call on Israel to cease violations of international law, and support an independent investigation into these deaths.”

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) condemns Israel’s shooting of London, ON based doctor Tarek Loubani, shot while attending the wounded in Gaza. Despite being clearly identified as a first responder, Loubani sustained a moderate injury to his left leg, and a minor injury to his right leg. A friend and colleague of Loubani’s, paramedic Musa Abuhassanin was killed, along with at least 54 other Palestinians in Gaza yesterday.

Wednesday, June 6th, 2007

It is the conviction of Canpalnet that there are many and varied pathways that can and do bring Canadians to a simple conclusion; namely, that Israel's occupation must be ended, for elementary justice, and to salvage the humanity of all.

To illustrate this, a diverse and distinguished panel of speakers assembled in Vancouver at a press conference on June 6th to express their opposition to Israel’s 40 year occupation of Palestinian lands, and to call for the government of Canada to take action against that occupation and in support of human rights and international law. The conference took place in the Bank of Nova Scotia Room at Simon Fraser University’s Harbour Centre campus in downtown Vancouver.

Dr. Naseer Aruri, noted Palestinian intellectual and prolific author, was a special guest. Born in Jerusalem, now Emeritus Chancellor Professor at the University of Massachussetts, he has been a member of the international board of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (USA), and Palestinian human rights groups. His most recent work is Dishonest Broker: The U.S. Role in Israel and Palestine.

A statement of support was sent by the all-party parliamentary group in Ottawa, the Canada Palestine Parliamentary Association.

That message and the statements of the panelists (listed below) are posted on this site.